The Elizabeth Buccleuch Prize (formerly the Tony Lothian Prize) awards £2,000 to the best proposal for a first, uncommissioned biography. It is generously supported by Richard, Duke of Buccleuch, in memory of his late wife, and has proved over the years to be of invaluable assistance to first-time biographers in finding agents and getting their work published and recognised
Judges
- Dan Franklin– former publisher at Jonathan Cape
- Catharine Morris – Associate Editor at the TLS
- Lucy Scholes – critic and Senior Editor at McNally Editions
Past Winners
Many of the shortlisted writers (as well as winners, below) have gone on to find agents and publishers
2025 // David Warren: Sir Ernest Satow: A Victorian Diplomat and the Birth of Modern Japan
2024 // Mark Nayler: The Popular Philosopher – A Life of Bryan Magee (Bloomsbury, 2028)
2023 // Andrew Kenrick: Rex Juba: 15 Glimpses of an African King (Bloomsbury, August 2026)
2022 //Catherine Haig: An Unfinished Life – Lady Gwendolen Cecil (1860–1945)
2021 //Sarah Harkness: Alexander Macmillan, Advocate for the Ignorant – The Life and Times of a Victorian Publisher (Macmillan)
2020 // Kate Crehan: But Will it Get a Laugh? The Life of Doris Hare in Three Acts (published by the Society for Theatre Research)
2019 // Tom Seymour Evans: The Canyons – Six British Exiles, Los Angeles and the Counterculture
2018 // Harriet Baker for Rural Hours: Interwar Female Writers, Landscape and Living (Allen Lane)
2017 // John Woolf for Queen Victoria’s Freaks – The Performers at Buckingham Palace (published in autumn 2018 by Michael O’Mara Books as Peerless Prodigies: Freaks, Circuses and the extraordinary World of P.T. Barnum)
2016 // Sarah Watling for Noble Savages (published by Jonathan Cape, May 2019)
2015 //Francesca Wade for Square Haunting (published by Faber, 2020)
2014 // Polly Clark for Thank You So Much for Writing
2013 // Elaine Thornton for Amalia Beer: A Prussian-Jewish Life
2012 // Jane Willis for Marguerite, Byron and the Literary Factory
2011 // Jane Gordon-Cumming for The American Heiress and the Scottish Rake: The True Story of the Royal Baccarat Scandal
2010 // Matt Cox for White Lies, Black Magic: Prince Monolulu